


Wearing One's Color

by kaelio



Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Gender Considerations, M/M, That time in "Way of the Warrior", Wearing Blue, yeah you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-24 16:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21800902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaelio/pseuds/kaelio
Summary: Garak ponders who wears what colors on the station.
Relationships: Julian Bashir/Elim Garak (relevant)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 132





	Wearing One's Color

**Author's Note:**

> Based on that thing people noticed where he's got blue in his spoon in Way of the Warrior.
> 
> Relevant episodes: "Second Skin", "Profit and Lace", "Way of the Warrior", "Broken Link", and an unshot scene where Garak mentions having been on Ferenginar and I do not recall what episode that was for.

The mirror is neither flattering nor unflattering. And neither is the blue.

It’s incongruous, that’s what it is.

There’s always a little bit of blue in the center, owing to the vascularization of the spot. It is true of all Cardassians, but somewhat more distinct among women, who furthermore accentuate it, natural sexual dimorphism always ripe for enhancement.

And here he has gone on and done it himself, applied the shade, as women do, to gauge it for effect.

—Not to any witness, mind, or none but to himself.

Applying the shade—and it is lapis lazuli, glorious!—is no challenge at all. He has worked in the skin of women. They are altogether more familiar than a Romulan face and Romulan manners, which in turn are closer than Klingon hides, or Tzenketh, and rest assured it is better not to think about the Ferengi at all. (The _hearing_ comes with it, lest one be unmasked, and it is _terrible, horrendous, unbearable_ , to hear as a Ferengi can.)

And even among them, he has worked as women, as convenient. Most gardeners on Romulus are women, and is it always better to be unremarkable: another dull face with dull tastes and dull manners. (And the people of those worlds think not, ‘she will be forgotten’, but they don’t even think of her at all.) On Ferenginar, it would not have worked as well, and he had been grateful for that, because he is, at heart, a little prim.

Kira had been aghast to wear a Cardassian face, and Garak could sympathize, even though—to him—to insume a proper reflection was always the moment he arrived home. The soils of Cardassia pulled out from under his feet until his skin was gray again.

It was never a matter of whether he was in a configuration that “wore blue”; Cardassia has daughters and sons. In fact, one might very well assess that it loves its daughters better: they are given to stay planetside, while men among the stars make war, as idiots often do.

He looks at himself and he is brushed with blue and he thinks very little of it, because Cardassia would swell up beneath his feet and bear him. To wear blue commemorates his world, and the blue—it is lapis!—is found there.

He has observed the doctor for a good while now; he and the Doctor have now been friends for years. He and the Doctor have been friends for years. And the Doctor is enamored by those who “wear blue” even when they do not wear blue. (But they do—the Doctor’s kind—darken the hairs that encircle their eyes, and Garak thinks that’s quite mad.)

And there is a reason that Garak is staring at his reflection, because currently his reflection _had blue applied,_ which was a thoroughly tactile way to address the fact that it _could wear blue_ if _it so chose._

Federation doctors do such things all the time, at anyone’s whim and to meet anyone’s need. They do not yet have enough information about the physiology of Cardassians, but Garak knows where he could acquire it, trivially. It’s a minor betrayal if any at all; if the Federation had any sense, they’d have vivisected their way into the same knowledge, as Cardassians had done to humankind (ssh—be quiet!)

The lie is very easy: “Doctor, dear, I will confess, though I am merely a humble shopkeeper, I was engaged in some deceit, though quite necessarily, as you’ll hear. You see, I adopted this face to reduce the threat of shall-we-say _harassment_ I would face on the station. When I arrived, there were few women on Terok Nor, and Gul Dukat’s appetite was legendary—"

In fact, any lie would do.

“It frightens me to tell you this, but I trust you, and I trust in the good faith of the Federation. And I certainly trust in Sisko differently than our Cardassian leadership, _particularly_ in that regard. I know it is strange, but will you please…? It would mean everything to me. Please, Doctor, change me back?”

He needn’t even specify further. A great sculptor, Pygmalion, would never design a woman he would not—

But here’s the trouble: Garak does not want to wear blue—thinks it’s perfectly natural, but not natural to him. There are species—and small brains—who’d contend by orthogonal considerations that the transfiguration is only logical, and they’re damned fools, every one.

The experience, however, of that skin: Garak’s been on many assignments, he’s no stranger to it. He was trained to do it just as well.

(Procal Dukat knew that, a little bit too late.)

But to rope in sweet Bashir with it: quite repulsive, isn’t that so?

Garak looks at his hands and tells himself something, audaciously enough, that _is_ true: Garak hasn’t the faintest clue which way he was born. There’s reason to assume Tain would mandate no change, and Garak is Garak and born to be as he is, but there are a handful of others that would suggest that there may have been an adjustment.

And if Garak himself (if Garak) does not know, then there is certainly no misdeed in being whatever best fits the situation. In fact, that’s what Garak most expects of his father. (Or mother, whichever Tain it-self might be.)

But like it or not, Garak doesn’t want to wear blue. And he doesn’t want the doctor, dear doctor, to want him in blue.

The captivating thing about that dream, foolish and insipid and naïve as it is, is the Doctor’s affection is for Garak as he is. And to deliberately recalibrate it would be to desire affection for being what he isn’t. The entire enterprise suffocates. Something that has meaning would be destroyed by the act.

But the converse—can’t bear it—is he watches the Doctor trail figures in blue and no others.

And Garak is lonely, and remembers this.

His scheduled breakfast with Odo is in just a few minutes. He thinks to wash his face, to rid himself of the evidence, but reconsiders.

The only one to whom the message would mean anything does not speak the language of the sender.


End file.
